Nandigram bypoll to test CPM & TC ideologies

Tamal Sengupta, ET BureauOct 28, 2008, 05.04am IST

KOLKATA: Ahead of likely Lok Sabha polls, the CPI and its arch rival Trinamool Congress would have a face-off in the upcoming byelections to the Nandigram assembly seat along with two other constituencies in Purulia and Malda districts.

Although three assembly seats—Nandigram in East Midnapore district, Para in Purulia district and Sujapur in Malda district—will go for by-elections by end-November, political circles in West Bengal are anxiously awaiting the outcome of upcoming Nandigram bypoll. This is especially since Mamata Banerjee has wrested the East Midnapore zilla parishad from CPM in the May panchayat elections.

Incidentally, CPI's Illias Mohammad had won the Nandigram seat during the 2006 assembly polls. But he recently resigned following an alleged involvement in a bribery case which came to the limelight after a private television channel telecast a news showing Illias receiving money from an NGO.

The speaker of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly (WBLA) Hasim Abdul Halim had ordered an inquiry into the incident and the investigation is still on. But the former CPI MLA had resigned before completion of the inquiry which necessitated byelections to his constituency of Nandigram.

Though Nandigram is CPI's seat and Illias won the same in two consecutive polls in 2006 and 2001, the CPM will have to take the heat in the coming bypolls in the region which experienced prolonged violence and killings in 2007 and during early 2008.

Nandigram was supposed to get the first SEZ in West Bengal since Indonesia's Salim Group proposed to set up the economic zone there. But the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government had to shelve the idea of setting up the SEZ following continuous violence and killings in the area over the last two years.

In fact, anti-CPM forces such as the Trinamool Congress had succeeded in preventing the Left Front government from carrying out one of its major projects in Nandigram in the name of a organising movement against farmland acquisition.

Trinamool Congress' campaign to prevent Tata Motors from establishing the Nano factory in Singur had received a massive shot-in-the-arm after the party's pro-farmer crusade in Nandigram.

Mamata had managed to thwart Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government's bid to establish an SEZ in Nandigram and the Nano factory at Singur. Surprisingly, her party has won the panchayat elections in both the areas—Singur and Nandigram—held in May 2008.

Byelections to the Nandigram assembly seat will be held under this backdrop and there's no doubt that the fight in Nandigram is being seen as an ideological struggle between CPM and Trinamool Congress.

While the Trinamool Congress is trying to brand the CPM as an "anti-farmer force", the CPM's effort will be to project Mamata Banerjee as an evil whose only aim is to prevent Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government from carrying out its drive to industrialise the state.

The CPM might be in a tough turf at Nandigram as the area falls in East Midnapore district which was won by Mamata Banerjee during the May panchayat elections. Mamata has already announced to visit Nandigram on November 10.

The CPM too is preparing for the polls and is likely to hold a meeting of the Left Front on October 30 to take up the poll issue.